SAN ANTONIO -- Discomfort contorted Gregg Popovich's face as he pondered a defensive demise nobody wanted to concede.
With the San Antonio Spurs mired in a three-game skid at the time, and mere minutes before the Feb. 27 start of a league-best nine-game winning streak, Popovich seemed to have given up hope for the return of a defensive foundation that had buttressed the franchise for more than two decades.
"We used to call it 'stops on demand,'" he said, "where at certain points in the game, if you needed to get [defensive] stops, you could always depend on it.